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School Is Eating My Holidays

In primary school, December was a month spent colouring in, watching movies, and making Christmas decorations. It was the best month of the year. That all changed once you got to high school, but you were lucky enough to get the last fortnight or so before the summer holidays to bludge and watch as many vaguely-subject related movies as you liked. Teachers had written your reports, there were no more marks for the year, and they were looking forward to six weeks of freedom as much as you were (if not more, as I’ve discovered growing up with teacher-parents).Year eleven – at least in NSW – is entirely different.

It was our last day of the school year yesterday, and yet, it felt like any other day of the year. Apart from a class party in Ancient History, it could very well have been any other day of the year. I even had an assessment task! We had completed other tasks in recent weeks and were told we’d have to wait until after the holidays to get back our marks. We received holiday homework. It was like a foreign world. From the way the teachers were talking, it was like they were just giving us six weeks of at home study instead of an actual break from school.

I’m heading to France on NYE with my school for three weeks, and as my to-do list grew, and grew, and grew, I began to panic. I have two weeks until I leave the country, how am I meant to achieve everything I need to get done, find time to relax, work (I’ll need some spending money to blow on the Champs Elysees and at Disneyland!), and manage to you know, actually catch up with family and celebrate Christmas.

Year twelve, I know you’ve only just started, but I’m really not into you. Are you going to eat up the next ten months as much as you’re eating up my last summer holidays of high school? Not fair, education system, not fair. Of course, I could not study and spend my holidays on the beach and shopping like so many of my younger schoolmates will be, but with ATARs being released in the past week, and seeing my older friends either be ecstatic or disappointed, I realise that this time next year when I’m finally free, I won’t regret all the work I put into year twelve at all.